IT WAS meant to be light entertainment to celebrate the Queen's 80th birthday, but the BBC's Great British Menu has now triggered the ultimate food fight.

Like most kitchen barneys, there is plenty of room for a pun as chefs get into a froth over television executives' choice of cooks to represent Wales. And the affair has boiled over - after a magazine featured a dessert representing Wales from the competition. It was a concoction of apricots and "bloody Welsh cakes" in the words of one chef.

The furore surrounds Great British Menu, a series of 40 programmes which has started this week on BBC2, and is based on pairs of chefs from each region of the UK competing for the honour of cooking a birthday meal for the Queen.

Wales is represented by Angela Hartnett, head chef at the five-star Connaught Hotel in London, and Bryn Williams, a chef at the Michelin-starred Orrery Hotel, London. But this is not to the taste of leading Welsh chefs who say that the selection was too London-centric and that Hartnett was not even born in Wales.

"I love the idea of chefs battling it out from all the regions to provide a meal for the Queen," said Mary Ann Gilchrist, of the Carlton House restaurant with rooms, Llanwrtyd Wells.

"But it's turned out to be a bucket-load of London chefs and hardly anybody else. It's pathetic. It's not on."

Graham Tinsley, manager of the Welsh Culinary Team, said he was mystified by the selection process used. None of the 30 chefs involved with the Welsh team - ranked seventh in the world - had been approached.

"The two chefs representing Wales are working in London. It's the establishments in Wales that are losing out on good PR," he said. "People are going to think there are no good chefs in Wales because they're all in London, which is a load of rubbish."

Mrs Gilchrist, who has previously been awarded a Michelin star, was approached by the programme's makers but was not given a screen test.

She said many of the chefs representing other regions were also based in London.

"At the end of the day they didn't have the guts to try chefs who were untested on TV. They weren't prepared to take the risk. The BBC feel that chefs living and working in Wales aren't suitable for TV.

"It sends a lousy message to the general public when Wales is represented by chefs in London. It doesn't do anything for the reputation of Welsh food. Wales has a plethora of really good chefs and fabulous ingredients. We've got some real characters who probably would be marvellous on TV."

S4C chef Dudley Newbery said Angela Hartnett had been "very vague" about her Welsh connections.

"I don't know where she comes from," he said.

"If they're going to get people from Scotland and Ireland to take part, they should have got people from Wales. There are other people who could have taken her place. She shouldn't have been there - it's as simple as that. They didn't play very fair."

Mrs Gilchrist said several of the chosen cooks, including Angela Hartnett, worked for celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's company. Great British Menu is being made by the company which produced Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon Ramsay's F Word.

A BBC spokeswoman said all 14 chefs featured in the series had "a connection" with their region. Bryn Williams worked in London but was trying to set up a restaurant in Wales.

She added, "Although she does not live and work in Wales at present, Angela Hartnett has strong connections to Wales. Her mother was born there, family members live there and she is passionate about Wales and Welsh cooking, as is evident in the programme.

"A number of other chefs were approached for initial discussion in the first stages of the project, but for a number of factors were not chosen to appear in the programme.

"Bryn Williams and Angela Hartnett create a tense and exciting heat of the competition, which showcases some of the fantastic local ingredients to be found in Wales."